


Hard Evidence

by OwMyFace



Category: Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VII
Genre: Attempt at Humor, Don't Examine This Too Closely, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-29
Updated: 2015-07-29
Packaged: 2018-04-11 20:26:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,292
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4450994
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OwMyFace/pseuds/OwMyFace
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Reno and Rude each have their own way of finding out if Elena's made of the right stuff.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hard Evidence

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Nikasha](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nikasha/gifts).



> For Nikasha for the FF7 Fanworks Exchange '15. Prompt: After losing nearly their entire department, the Turks are forced to pick themselves up and keep moving. Their only applicant is Elena, and they find themselves trying to figure out how to work with this new addition to their team, while working around the sudden quiet of the office.

I.

 

Hospital wasn't doing much for Reno's dignity. He'd always been independent, and proud of it, and he hated being bed-bound and having everything brought to him, being propped up and laid down and pricked and prodded and, “Does this hurt?” Of course it fucken hurt. Those terrorists on the support pillar had damn near killed him. He wouldn't be here if he wasn't hurt, and hurt real bad.

He hated his nurse. Pretty early on he'd scared off the pretty ones, and now they only sent this stern old woman from Corel with grey hair wound up like a pot-scourer, who seemed to be totally immune to his charms.

He also hated the dumb floaty gowns they made him wear. They did allow a man certain freedoms, and as most of the ladies in Midgar knew, he needed those freedoms more than most guys. But he was always worried people secretly laughed when they caught a flash of his scrawny ass.

But probably the worst thing about the whole shitty experience was the visits. It was bad enough to have been brought so low, but to be _seen_ like this was even worse. Whenever a guest entered his room, it was like he saw himself through their eyes. A pale, bruised face staring up from the bed; scarred, spindly arms above the covers; a broken man. 

A man getting fixed up.

There was one visit, though, that he was hoping for despite all this, a visit where his curiosity outweighed his shame. He was hoping to get a peek at the new rookie. She was the first new blood they'd had in a long while, and while he'd been lying in his bed he'd thought up a kind of test, to make sure she was up to scratch. He'd asked Rude to find an excuse to send her to see him.

The day she came the nurse had cut his morphine dosage and he was feeling scratchy and irritable. The creak of the door was painfully loud. She was wearing her suit, and clutching a white envelope to her chest.

“So,” Reno said. “You're the rookie. Margot's little sister, right?”

Her face reddened and her hands scrunched the edges of the envelope. He'd obviously hit a nerve. That was quick, he thought. He was only just getting started.

“My name's Elena,” she said, laying her big eyes on him. Very different to her sister's, those eyes. Brown instead of blue, but there was something else about them, something raw and needy.

“Sure,” Reno drawled, pushing himself up in his bed. “I guess you know who I am.”

“Reno, of the Turks,” Elena said. It hadn't really been a question, but she'd answered it anyway. He got the feeling she was one of those people who always had an answer.

“The one and only. What have you got there?”

“A report, sir. Your eyes only.”

“You mean you didn't take a peak?”

She shook her head.

“Not even a little one? Why not?”

“It wouldn't be right, would it? It's for your eyes only.”

“Come on. Where's your Turk curiosity?”

“I had orders –”

“Your sister would have looked.”

Elena blushed and her gaze dropped to the floor, her fringe falling to hide her eyes.

Reno almost felt guilty. This was too easy.

She started to tear the seal on the envelope, but he objected.

“You had your chance,” he said. “Give it here.”

She stopped ripping and handed him the envelope. Reno opened it and peered inside at the contents. All he could see was a glossy cover and a pair of, shit, probably D-Cups, but that was enough. For now. Good old Rude.

“That can wait,” he said, setting it on his bedside table. “Right now, what I really want is a cigarette. They don't let me smoke up here. Can you believe that?”

“It's bad for you, isn't it?”

“So they say. Hey, you mind coming down with me? They don't let me out on my own.”

“Sure,” Elena said. She didn't look too happy about it, though.

Taking it easy on his cracked ribs, Reno swung his legs off the bed and set them on the floor. He made sure the slit in his gown was properly aligned before he stood up and reached for his crutch and his cigarette pack.

His left knee was still tender after he'd dislocated it, so he had to put most of his weight on the crutch as they made their way down the hallway. It clicked every time it hit the floor. His nurse glared at him as he passed her desk. Reno glared back.

He was slow, moving like this, and he didn't like that. By the time they reached the end of the hall Elena was a few steps ahead of him, and he got a good view of her back.

“Y'know, you got a nice ass,” he told her. A cheap shot, even he admitted that, but still she whirled around and glared at him. “What, nobody's ever told you that?” he said.

They went down in the elevator in silence. To Reno's amusement, she wouldn't even look at him. He kept staring at her, grinning, watching the veins worm on the side of her head.

They got out on the ground floor and Reno crutched towards the exit. He could almost taste the nicotene.

The carpark outside the hospital was kind of bleak, he reflected as they passed through the sliding doors and out into a cold wind. There were people standing around or sitting, puffing on what you just somehow knew was the highlight of their day. The breeze tugged at their gowns, and almost reflexively Reno's hand clutched at his own. He'd seen more than one ass bared out here.

He leaned up on a wall so he knew his butt was safe and got started on his first cigarette. Usually he tried to get two or three in out here, so he didn't have to make the trip so often.

He turned to Elena, offering the pack. “Want one?”

“Sure,” Elena said, leaning back on the wall. He offered her the pack and she selected one, used his lighter to get the end burning. He watched the motion carefully; it was kind of cute. She obviously wasn't a smoker.

He guessed she just wanted to prove something to him. That she was just as tough as he was, or something. She was sucking her cigarette like it had offended her.

“So, you want to be a Turk, huh?” Reno said.

Elena nodded warily.

“Think you got what it takes?”

“Yeah,” Elena said.

Reno shrugged, vented smoke. “I'm not sure if I see it.”

Elena's jaw dropped and the cigarette fell from between her fingers, lay smoking beside a blob of squashed gum on the pavement. Her eyes were on fire.

“What?” Reno said. “I'm just saying what I think. You disagree?”

“Of course I do. And so does Tseng. He hired me, didn't he?”

“Well, you were the only applicant,” Reno drawled. He gave that a moment to sink in. “Besides, getting the job's only the start. You got any idea how many rookies we lose on the first few missions?”

“Well, I'm not like them, am I?” Elena said. “I was born into this.”

Reno couldn't help laughing. “Born into it? Where were you born, exactly?”

“Junon,” she said. “Dad was working on the base over there. When I was six he got posted to Corel. Do you have any idea what that was like? They hated us there. We were Shinra. That's where I learned to fight. Then the Midgar slums, so he could run the military academy. They hated us there too, because we were Shinra and because we were rich. So I got better at fighting. I won five elite emblems at military school. Five!” She was pretty much shouting at him. “More than anyone else. More than Margot, even. You really think I'm no good?”

Reno smiled. She was really asking for it, wasn't she? “Thanks for the life story. But elite emblems? Seriously? They don't mean shit out here. You only got the job because your sister was so damn perfect. And you're nothing like her.”

Her fist came swinging at his gut so fast, so unexpectedly, that he couldn't do anything to avoid it. It hit him like a freight train, bending him around her arm. His crutch clattered to the ground, he couldn't breathe. He could taste blood.

“Shit! Sir, I'm really, really sorry!” She was panicking, her hands fluttering like she couldn't decide whether she should touch him or not. “Fuck! Shit! Should I get a doctor?”

Reno grinned at her, straightened up slowly and carefully and wiped the blood from around his mouth. That definitely hadn't helped his ribs. But he'd had worse.

“You'll be okay, rookie,” he told her. “You'll be okay.”

Elena smiled, then craned her neck to look behind Reno. Too late he realised, clawed the folds of his gown together. Elena said:

“That's a nice ass you got there, sir.”

II.

The office was too quiet for Rude. A funny thought; he'd always found it too noisy, before. He'd never said much to the other Turks when they'd been around, but he found himself missing them now they were gone. Too many empty desks.

It was particularly bleak now Reno was out of action. Just him and the rookie to hold the fort, with Tseng in meetings or shut away in his office most of the time.

The rookie. She'd been hanging around for nearly a week now, and Rude still wasn't sure she was up to the job. It was hard to put his finger on why, exactly, but he thought it had something to do with her attitude. She just seemed to care too much. But Tseng had picked her, and Rude had been in this job long enough by now to know not to second guess the Boss.

But fuck, what was he even thinking of that for? He was supposed to be concentrating. He forced his eyes down onto the plans laid out on his desk, bent his brain to the task of figuring out where those damn weak points were.

“Fuck! Ow. Fucking hell.”

Rude looked up. Elena had somehow spilled coffee all down her front. He watched her frantically dab at the stain with a cloth.

She caught him looking at her and blushed. Rude went back to his work.

A moment later she appeared at his elbow.

“Hey, you mind showing me what you're working on?” she said.

Rude looked up at her, frowning. He just wanted to get this done, not explain every step. Elena had her own jobs to be getting on with.

“Well, if I'm ever going to be any good at this job, people are going to have to start teaching me stuff. Don't you think?” Elena said. She looked reproachful. “You guys never show me anything.”

Rude sighed. It was years since they'd had any new blood in the office. He guessed he'd forgotten how much hand-holding rookies needed. “Okay, take a seat,” he said, pulling over the chair from Alvis' – from the empty desk next to his – for her to sit on.

“So these are the plans for a ship that's being used by a group of mercenaries to ship supplies to the rebels at Fort Condor,” he explained.

“I can see that,” Elena said.

She wasn't making this easy. “So I've been told to make it disappear,” Rude said.

“Why's that?”

“Huh?” Rude tried to work out what she meant by the question. Because Tseng had told him to? What other reason could there be?

“'Huh?'” Elena said in a deep, gruff voice that sounded a lot like – was she mocking him? “Why do we need to get involved, make it 'disappear'? They're supporting rebels, right? That's illegal. Why don't Public Safety handle it?”

Truth was, Rude hadn't given that much thought. When he started he always used to wonder about the reasons the company wanted stuff done, but eventually he'd decided to save himself the headache and just get on with doing it. Saved him wrestling with a lot of guilt.

“I guess they want it done quietly,” he said after taking a moment to think. “I mean, sure, they could send out a couple of Gelnikas to deal with it. But then it becomes this whole PR exercise, y'know? 'Shinra military crushes rebel warship' in the next day's _Herald._ But really, it's best if the company doesn't even acknowledge these rebel groups. Makes it seem like they're not a threat.”

“I see.”

Rude was expecting the usual rookie questions: But isn't that awful for their families? Never knowing what happened to them? But they didn't come. Instead Elena asked:

“So you're figuring out where to put the charges to make it sink as quickly as possible, is that it?”

“Yeah, that's it,” Rude said, cracking a smile.

Elena frowned and leaned over at the drawing. “It's an old M370,” she said. “Shinra built a whole fleet of them, about 20 years ago. But they were all decommissioned after about three years, because the join near the bow was too weak. Torpedoes just wasted them.” She looked at Rude. “That's where I'd put your charges, sir. Just there.” She tapped the spot on the drawing.

Rude did some quick headmath. She was right. He was, he realised, impressed.

“How'd you know that?” he asked.

“I went to military school, didn't I?” Elena told him. “They do teach us some things there.”

Rude grinned as she walked away. Somehow, the office didn't seem so empty any more.

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry, this is kind of rushed and kind of bad and kind of doesn't really fit the prompt at all. Hopefully you can still get something out of it, though!


End file.
